The West Virginia senator reaps big financial rewards from a network of coal companies with grim records of pollution, safety violations, and death.

A 22,000-word breakdown of Kubrick’s “odyssey portraying the span of millennia.”

The dissolution of Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng’s marriage amidst evidence of her affairs with Tony Blair and Eric Schmidt.

A memory of interviewing the late great songwriter Townes Van Zandt shortly before his death.

From a small Ohio town to Afghanistan, a portrait of the perpetrator of a massacre.

How group of misfits in Texas including Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings snubbed Nashville and brought the hippies and rednecks together. An oral history of outlaw country.

[Part 1 of 2] The story behind this spring’s spate of retributive murders in Southwest D.C.

On a book of photographs shot by Leni Riefenstahl in the 1950s and 1960s depicting an African tribe.

How the culture of academia helped Amy Bishop, a University of Alabama scientist who murdered colleagues during a faculty meeting, fall apart.

How three friends and a team of frat brothers made a fortune smuggling people along the most heavily patrolled stretch of highway in Texas.

A profile of philosopher Timothy Morton, who wants humanity to give up some of its core beliefs.

The rise of Mike Pence’s chief of staff Nick Ayers and what it reveals about post-Citizens United politics.

How the feds went after Thick Neck, Guilty, Stomper, Gunner, Lucky, Menace, and the rest of the Amernian mob in Los Angeles.

The political maneuvering behind the growth of massive consumer goods warehouses and the health hazards that often follow.

Fifty years later, the men who stole priceless gems from the Museum of Natural History recall the crime.

The story of John Laroche, which led to Orleans’ The Orchid Thief, and tangentially, the film Adaptation.

From pinball prohibition in 1940s NYC to Dave & Buster’s, the rise and fall of the American arcade.

Spending time with the Tonya Harding Fan Club in the wake of the assault on Nancy Kerrigan.

Henry Luce and Time vs. Harold Ross and The New Yorker. What was at stake in the epic magazine rivalry of the 20th century?

Alumni report in secret on Delphian, the mysterious boarding school that Scientology built in the mountains of Oregon.

A stroll through Tokyo’s Tsukiji, the world’s largest seafood market, and the mecca of the global sushi trade.

Two percent of humans can hear the Hum, a mysterious, low rumble in the distance. It might exist. It might be imaginary. It might be both.

How we respond to the rules of the road offers insight into being human.

For some Americans, history isn’t the story of what actually happened; it’s the story they want to believe.